With due respect, I think that’s a good analogy although slightly faulty. The bottom line is that the Ark of the Covenant did exist (presumably), while Jesus running off to marry Mary M. is pure fantasy.
And the thing with RAIDERS is that the bad guys were Nazis, and it’s OK to make them out as meanies and to stir up anti-Nazi sentiments. For Brown, the bad guys are the Catholic Church, the Masons, et al. and it’s NOT OK to stir up anti-Catholic feelings, anti-Mason sentiments.
I haven’t read it. As long as we’re splitting hairs, you’re correct that the story is marketed as fiction. But it’s fiction that the author claims is solidly grounded in fact - that is, the conspiracy is real, the clues in the paintings are real, just the people in the story are made-up.
Yes, they are.
But there is a Louvre, and it does have a pyramid over it, and the pyramid is a pagan symbol, right? The point is, it’s not about magical beings travelling to mystic lands to fight mythical creatures invented by the author, which a lot of people seem to think. I question whether some of you have even read the book.
Such as? I mean, if that’s your best example of the supposedly overwhelming number of factual inaccuracies, color me unimpressed.
I really don’t think that the author’s claim is that important. I don’t believe he said he was superhuman and incapable of error. The point is that there is a great deal of stuff in the book that is based on actual history, which is enough to make it a compelling story.
I just don’t see it that way. I read the book, which was very obviously a work of fiction. I assumed that it was all made up, and was actually quite surprised to find out how much of it is based on reality. Only having a passing familiarity with The Last Supper, I looked it up and was pleasantly surprised to see that the details used in the book are in fact in the painting. You can disagree with the interpretation, but I don’t see how you can deny that the ideas, even though they are fantasy, are compelling. The book is full of stuff like that. I think you are demanding too much from it; of course it’s not the perfect book. Just because it was over-hyped doesn’t mean it’s completely without merit. That’s fine if you want to criticize it; I just get so sick of hearing people say: “Gee, I found one factual error, therefore there is nothing in the book that has anything to do with real art or history.”
But is that an issue for a screenplay?
Philadelphia - Tom Hanks movie
Philadelphia Story - Katharine Hepburn movie
As hinted at in my post.
Do you have a cite for that? Did he really say that? Because it was just so obvious to me, reading the book, that it was a fictional plot. The organization behind the plot is a real organization, but I never had any pretense that they really did that stuff.
But the clues are real; and that’s exactly why it’s a clever novel. I, and I’m sure many other readers, looked at those paintings, and I could definitely see the elements that he was talking about. And the beauty of it is that it’s just ambiguous enough that you can see what he’s talking about, but you can also suspect that, nah - he just made that up. If he had just completely invented stuff, like “there’s a cat walking across the table in The Last Supper”, or “the Mona Lisa has 3 boobs”, or whatever, it wouldn’t have been interesting at all, because you would look at the painting and say, “No, that’s not even close”. I think the fact that people have talked about it so much is a testament to how cleverly it was done. If it had just been a case where you say, “That’s just total b.s.”, nobody would have even had any interest in how many details were historically accurate. There’s just enough reality in it to make people think about it.
I’m simply coming out of the woodwork to say “Bravo” to blowero. Not that you need any moral support for your position, but here it is nonetheless.
Regrettably, I have neither the time nor the patience to respond beyond what has already been said. So, “what he said”.
Fun to annoy them too! 
Yes, there has to be some verissimilitude in the novel for the thing to work in the first place. That’s not the same as “the clues are real.”
Re; OP - it will be a hit.
IMO - Hanks is a good actor getting better.
The NOVEL had several good premises but wasted them through the most crass, style-free, money-seeking, lowest common denominator writing I can remember.
I read it on holiday - I thought that was what it was for - and left it in the cottage in order that others wanting to buy it would be saved the cost. I finished it in order that I could be critical from an informed position.
‘Tonight, asleep she awakens to the shrill of the telephone’ Jeez
The movie will be huge, as stylistically and in terms of pacing, I would hope there would be some care taken and the novel’s writing won’t matter. Hell I might even enjoy it. I agree with R Thornhill - it’s got to be better than the book.
Diogenes the Cynic, the movie you’re thinking of, with Tommy Lee Jones in it, was **The Missing[/b} co-starring Cate Blanchett as his estranged daughter. I thought it was very good. It’s a western, set in the late 1800’s.
Thank you, that was it. It looked pretty good from the trailers but I haven’t caught up to it yet. I’ll put it on my list.
The thread was about the surprise that Hanks was going to be in the movie and that Ron Howard was going to direct it, as opposed to David Lynch or Oliver Stone or Cronenberg.
I was merely pointing out that the book was a populist action story, NOT the exposing of a mass conspiracy, and therefore that a populist director like Ron Howard was the perfect choice for it.
I’m not trashing it by calling it a populist novel. Nor am I trashing it by comparing it to Goonies. If I enjoy it half as much as I enjoyed Goonies, I got my money’s worth. And, I enjoyed the book a lot.
However, I am saying is that the book is first and foremost an action/adventure/mystery. The fact that he used churches and art museums as the backdrop, instead of thieve’s hideouts and pirate caves, doesn’t elevate it above “Goonies”, not at all.
Trunk: this book is fiction, action/adventure entertainment.
DTC & Blowero : What are you talking about? This book is FICTION and ENTERTAINMENT.
Am I missing something here?
Tell it to BrainGlutton. He’s the one who thinks David Cronenberg should waste his time on it.